Afghan of­fi­cials: Suicide bomber kills six in Kabul

KABUL (AP): A SUICIDE bomber on a mo­tor­bike killed six peo­ple in Kabul yes­ter­day in an at­tack tar­get­ing a minibus with se­cu­rity agents work­ing for the gov­ern­ment. The Is­lamic State (IS) af­fil­i­ate in Afghanistan promptly claimed re­spon­si­bil­ity for the bomb­ing.

Sediq Sediqqi, an In­te­rior Min­istry spokesman, said four civil­ians and two mem­bers of the agency were killed. The at­tack also left 13 peo­ple wounded, in­clud­ing five mem­bers of the se­cu­rity force.

The blast de­stroyed the minibus and an­other car, which were quickly towed away as se­cu­rity forces sealed off the site of the suicide at­tack on a wide Kabul boule­vard.

An Afghan se­cu­rity of­fi­cial, who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymity be­cause he was not au­tho­rised to speak to the me­dia, said the bomber in­ten­tion­ally tar­geted the minibus with the mem­bers of the agency that pro­vides pro­tec­tion for high-rank­ing gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials — sim­i­lar to the US Se­cret Ser­vice.

SE­COND AT­TACK

The at­tack was the se­cond this year against the agency. In April, a co­or­di­nated Tal­iban as­sault us­ing a suicide truck bomb and gun­men killed 64 peo­ple at the agency’s main com­pound in Kabul.

The Afghan IS af­fil­i­ate claimed re­spon­si­bil­ity for Wed­nes­day’s at­tack in a post­ing on a web­site used by the mil­i­tants, say­ing an IS bomber at­tacked in­tel­li­gence ser­vice em­ploy­ees.

In other vi­o­lence, a man was killed late Tues­day night when a sticky bomb at­tached to his car det­o­nated in Kabul, the city’s po­lice said. The po­lice said the ve­hi­cle be­longed to a gov­ern­ment min­istry of­fice in charge of ru­ral de­vel­op­ment.

The Is­lamic State group emerged for the first time last year in Afghanistan as an off­shoot of the mil­i­tant group fight­ing in Iraq and Syria. An­a­lysts be­lieve the IS af­fil­i­ate in the coun­try is mostly made up of dis­en­fran­chised Tal­iban fight­ers.